The Reconstruction Era, a nationwide effort to rebuild and stabilize the country after the Civil War and assimilate freed slaves into society with their newly conferred rights, had officially ended in 1877, a little over a decade before. Yet, this new withdrawal of Northern troops and influence from the south led to the rise of what we know today to be the Era of Jim Crow.
In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, requiring all railroads to provide train cars that were “separate but [had] equal accommodations” which would segregate black passengers from whites. This was following a chain of similar bills in neighboring states, after Florida took the lead by passing the first law dictating that railroad cars must be segregated in 1887.
In resistance to the Separate Car Act, Homer Adolph Plessy pulled a “Rosa Parks.” Or rather, Rosa Parks was the one who pulled a “Plessy” several decades later. On June 7th, 1892, Plessy took a train, sat down on the car for whites, refused to leave, and was subsequently arrested. While being tried for violating the Separate Car Act, Plessy countered by claiming that the law was unconstitutional and it infringed on the 14th Amendment which guaranteed freed slaves citizenship, rights, and equal protection. (The judge presiding over his case was Hon. John Ferguson, hence the name, Plessy v. Ferguson.) Four years later, after a series of court battles, the case finally made it way up to the Supreme Court, where the court ruled in a landmark case that “separate but equal” was constitutional. They argued that the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment, which mandates that states cannot discriminate against individuals based on unrelated differences, does not apply to “social rights.”
With this case, the Supreme Court constitutionalized segregation, and it marked the rise of Jim Crow laws. The case was not overturned until 1954, with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
Plessy v. Ferguson remains today as one of the most notable cases concerning social rights in American history. One of the conservative justices, Samuel Alito, who voted in favor of Roe v. Wade’s overturning, refers to Plessy v. Ferguson as an example of an “egregiously wrong” decision and compares it to Roe v. Wade, calling them both unconstitutional “from the day it was decided.” What he doesn’t seem to accept is that Plessy’s case legalized segregation and took away countless rights of blacks for decades, while Roe v. Wade protected women’s rights and its recent overturning in favor of fetal rights proves the opposite effect. These two landmark decisions both had lasting effects on American society and history. While Plessy forced an uphill battle for the rights of millions of black Americans in the 20th century, we can only wait to see whether or not Roe’s overturning will follow similar historical trends.
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